Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Ongoing #16 Preview

Thanks to our friends at IDW Publishing we have the preview for next week's Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Ongoing #16. Be sure to pick up a copy at retail or download next Wednesday. Seibertron.com review will be posted Tuesday, stay tuned!

Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye #16
James Roberts (w) • Alex Milne (a) • Milne, Nick Roche (c)
AFTERMATH! The battle for the Lost Light is over. As the survivors bury the dead, one Autobot begins a secret journey that will change everything. This special issue marks the beginning of “Remain in Light”—the game-changing finale to the first More Than Meets The Eye mega-story arc!
*2 regular covers will be shipped in a 1-to-1 ratio

FC • 32 pages • $3.99

*Variant Covers:
Marcelo Matere variant cover!

Bullet points:
Drift no more!
The calm before the storm—but on the starship Lost Light, nothing is ever very calm!
“Remain in Light” —the story everyone’s been waiting for—begins here!

sabrigami wrote:*edit*Holy scrap. I just noticed the panel with Overlord. hard to tell if he's dead or not. probably not. Aren't they even going to investigate him or something. Even look for a sign of Rewind?

sabrigami wrote:*edit*Holy scrap. I just noticed the panel with Overlord. hard to tell if he's dead or not. probably not. Aren't they even going to investigate him or something. Even look for a sign of Rewind?

It's just the first pages.

true enough. just looks like they're flying away. It's also nice to see my other fave bot Rotorstorm get a cameo

Disclaimer: while the review is relatively spoiler-free, the discussion in this thread may not be. If you do not want to ruin your reading experience, please do not read the comments until you've picked up the issue!

SynopsisAFTERMATH! The battle for the Lost Light is over. As the survivors bury the dead, one Autobot begins a secret journey that will change everything. This special issue marks the beginning of “Remain in Light”—the game-changing finale to the first More Than Meets The Eye mega-story arc!

Aaaand we're up to speed

Story

There's a definite lack of exclamation marks this issue, whatever the solicitation may say. Overlord and Rewind are dead (it seems), Ultra Magnus is dying (apparently), Rodimus, Chromedome and a lot more are hurt and hurting. Get your tissues out, there's some emotional stuff going on.

U sad bro?

I'd say there are three main plots running through, with all the usual addenda. Rodimus having to deal with what has happened behind his back and yet right under his nose (try working that out, physically): I love the portrayal of him in this issue, I simply love it. He's furious and feels, justly, betrayed, while still trying to keep a level head as captain of the ship. Drift is complementary to this section, and quite rightly has not a lot of excuses to offer.

Cameo appearance: Rotorstorm!

Ultra Magnus, on the operating table, with the Death Clock, surrounded by his 'friend' Swerve, Ratchet and Tailgate, who is having a real hard time keeping everything together. Somehow, Swerve's usual humour does not seem to work, and all of this issue is, fortunately, toned down. Tailgate, actually, gets some nice lines, and serves his function heartbreakingly well. (And those initial pages provide some rushed but good background to all his obsessions, too.)

Skids sure does talk a lot

Chromedome, trying to get over Rewind's death. There are some excellent moments here, unsurprisingly. The scenes with Skids outside the ship, hinting at the real ties between him and Rewind, the talk after the funeral revealing a big secret, the final pages. Especially towards the end, although a tad confusing in some frames.

Art

Artist on board this time is Agustin Padilla, who has previously worked on the Rage of the Dinobots miniseries, with Jose Aviles on inks. While I do like the work overall, something does quite feel right in terms of proportions and scale, especially with the smaller bots like Tailgate and Swerve.

Someone went to the Hasbro masterclass on scale

Burcham's colours really are something. This issue is toned done, almost muted, in remembrance of the events from the previous one, and the colouring just makes sure we get the gravity of the situation. There isn't that much space for Long to play around with lettering, but the captions in the final sections of the issue are really well executed.

Dem shadows

Overall, the artwork leaves me a bit unsure, but there are some gems in there, and the colours really do help. The images really suit the text, in hue, tone and saturation, and not just for flashbacks. The amount of work going into those last pages is impressive, and needs commending, though.

ThoughtsSpoilerish ahead

I liked it. I really liked it. I appreciated what Roberts did in the almost final pages, although it was a bit confusing at times. I'm glad there was no need for subtlety. I enjoyed how everything was turned down a notch, in terms of action, pacing and even colour saturation. One minor negative point I do have concerns the artwork, which doesn't always work. But it is a minor point.

Bobbing along..

I'm still unsure at the Overlord situation having been resolved so quickly, and similarly with Ultra Magnus' condition – although it wasn't entirely unsurprising, actually. The final page, while it will undoubtedly work in upcoming issues, felt almost forced after Rewind's message. We'll see where this goes, and whether what is left of the crew will indeed Remain in Light.

84forever wrote:Yuck! Transformers were never this emotional when I was a kid. Roberts has the whole crew acting like a bunch of girls toys!

Could you please re-phrase the last part of that statement?Some of us, me included, can find it offensive that, apparently, girls cannot enjoy Transformers, or that emotions are not something that boys have.

As always the official Transformers facebook page has posted their Creator Commentary for this week's new Transformers comic release, Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #16. Series writer James Roberts gives us his thoughts on the first five page, which we've mirrored below for those without facebook access.

Click here to read the Seibertron.com review of this issue and join the ongoing discussion.

PAGE 1: Kicking off with a very large fight in the Battle for Hell’s Point. This is a battle that has been mentioned a few times during other issues of TRANSFORMERS: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE. Why start here for this issue?

JAMES ROBERTS: I’m a fan of Stephen Moffat’s Doctor Who (I’m a bigger fan of Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who, but that’s another story), and I remember being thrilled at the openings to two of his grand finale-type episodes, “The Pandorica Opens” and “When A Good Man Goes To War.” In both cases you get this frenetic pre-credit sequence that tears through about a dozen mini-scenes, all of them in different times and different places, all of them vaguely (but not obviously) connected, and it really felt EPIC.

“The Gloaming” (issue 16’s story) is essentially the prologue to “Remain In Light,” and with the four Magnus-centric mini-scenes, hopping across time and space, I wanted to emulate that vertiginous rush of those Doctor Who episodes. Also, Moffat has talked about “The Pandorica Opens” being a sequel to every episode in Series 5 of Doctor Who, and I’ve always intended for “Remain in Light” to have a similar feel–lots of threads from the last 16 issues finally being tied together.

Also, all of the battles that we witness in this “teaser” are already embedded in MTMTE/LAST STAND OF THE WRECKERS lore: Hell’s Point, Simanzi and the fight for the Nightmare Engine. To date, they’ve all been referenced in passing but we haven’t actually seen them. Until now.

Finally, issue #16 is quite a contemplative, emotional issue, so I wanted to kick things off with some action. Don’t get me wrong, there are some big, big character beats and plot developments in the rest of the issue, but for those who like proper TF battle scenes–and who doesn’t–then there they are up front.

PAGE 2: We learn that Hell’s Point is a ship, and Ultra Magnus wasn’t always the character that he’s been shown to be during MTMTE. Here, he’s just a warrior like his fellow Autobots. Is this a part of his history that you’ve been wanting to show for a while? Was writing the scenes more fun than a Magnus scene on the Lost Light?

JAMES ROBERTS: I’ve treated Magnus in a very particular way since issue #1, playing up the stiff, rules-obsessed, “can’t-have-fun” side of his character. As we saw in issue #4, in his conversation with Rodimus, he’s struggling to cope with postwar life. His peculiarities – purging ostensibly unimportant words from his vocabulary (like “fun” and “relax”), insisting that badges are straight, arresting people for minor infractions – are his response to conditions that he’s simply not capable of coping with.

What I’m saying is, he wasn’t always the “joke” (to borrow Overlord’s insult) that he seems to be now. There’s a reason why he’s regarded by some as the Autobots’ greatest warrior; there’s a reason why he’s such an effective enforcer of the Tyrest Accord. In these first few pages, we see Magnus the Warrior, unencumbered by the personality traits that have come to the fore since the war ended. It seemed appropriate to remember him as he was, given what’s going to happen over the next few issues…

PAGE 3: Magnus (note the crooked badge), the Duobots and the Powerdashers (yes, you heard me right!) are getting ready to battle when yet again Magnus is taken down. Powerdashers haven’t had much done with them in almost 30 years of the franchise. Had you always wanted to get them in somewhere and show them as more than toys?

JAMES ROBERTS: Truthfully? I saw that Simon Furman was playing the super-obscure character card well in TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE and I thought “I’ll have me some of that.” Also, we’d seen Zetar in issue #9 (in an advert for bodygloving), so – much like Rotorstorm’s appearance on Page 4 – it was another opportunity to mix in some callbacks and continuity nods. Shock and Ore are there for the same reason.

Of course, the biggest link to a previous issue – and a deliberate one – is the reappearance of Torque, the Decepticon k-class officer seen in the opening and closing scenes of #8. Although it’s literally just occurred to me that no-one will realize that the Decepticon bomb with “Ultra Magnus” written on it is Torque’s alt mode, because I edited out that part of his conversation with Fulcrum in issue #8. Oh well.

PAGE 4: Another flashback where Ultra Magus suffers at the end. What’s your thinking with these flashbacks? Is it to demonstrate that we might not know the character quite as well as what we thought?

JAMES ROBERTS: The Autobots and Decepticons have been fighting for millions of years, which means there’s scope for change in how they approach the world. But the purpose of the flashbacks, aside from what I said earlier, was to show that Magnus has been through the wars and usually finds a way to make a comeback. Is that going to happen this time round…?

PAGE 5: The badly injured Magnus is being looked after by Ratchet, Swerve and Tailgate. We’re dealing with the fallout from issue #15. Having done so much with Ultra Magnus so far during the series, was it hard for you to mortally wound the character as you did?

JAMES ROBERTS: Not as hard as it was to kill Rewind in issue #15! What I find interesting about Magnus being on his deathbed, out of commission, is what it does to Rodimus. How does Rodimus cope without the voice of reason by his side? The rest of the issue, and much of “Remain in Light,” focuses on that. Yeah, that and a billion other things…

Va'al wrote:I had some issues with the religious aspect of the funeral, to be fair.Wasn't Drift the only religious nut in the crew?

But that cape is glorious.

I have to admit, I don't quite get what you mean. Yes, Drift is the only confirmed religious nut, but that doesn't mean that other crew members can't have a less intense level of belief. Or, they might just have been observing a traditional Cybertronian funeral with no particular awareness of what they are saying. Either way, I don't see what there is to trouble you.

84forever wrote:Yuck! Transformers were never this emotional when I was a kid. Roberts has the whole crew acting like a bunch of girls toys!

Could you please re-phrase the last part of that statement?Some of us, me included, can find it offensive that, apparently, girls cannot enjoy Transformers, or that emotions are not something that boys have.

Va'al wrote:I had some issues with the religious aspect of the funeral, to be fair.Wasn't Drift the only religious nut in the crew?

But that cape is glorious.

I have to admit, I don't quite get what you mean. Yes, Drift is the only confirmed religious nut, but that doesn't mean that other crew members can't have a less intense level of belief. Or, they might just have been observing a traditional Cybertronian funeral with no particular awareness of what they are saying. Either way, I don't see what there is to trouble you.

Oh it didn't trouble me! It's more that it all looked very solemn and organised and conservative, and so far we hadn't had an indication that the crew, Rodimus in particular, felt that way.

Cyclonus, I can understand, he is a very 'patriotic' character. Tailgate, sort of. Swerve, not convinced. Whirl? Nope.

Va'al wrote:I had some issues with the religious aspect of the funeral, to be fair.Wasn't Drift the only religious nut in the crew?

But that cape is glorious.

I have to admit, I don't quite get what you mean. Yes, Drift is the only confirmed religious nut, but that doesn't mean that other crew members can't have a less intense level of belief. Or, they might just have been observing a traditional Cybertronian funeral with no particular awareness of what they are saying. Either way, I don't see what there is to trouble you.

Oh it didn't trouble me! It's more that it all looked very solemn and organised and conservative, and so far we hadn't had an indication that the crew, Rodimus in particular, felt that way.

Cyclonus, I can understand, he is a very 'patriotic' character. Tailgate, sort of. Swerve, not convinced. Whirl? Nope.

Ok, I get it now. Seeing those particular characters sitting still and behaving is what threw you off. I have to admit that didn't really occur to me before, but it does seem weird now that you mention it.

84forever wrote:Yuck! Transformers were never this emotional when I was a kid. Roberts has the whole crew acting like a bunch of girls toys!

Could you please re-phrase the last part of that statement?Some of us, me included, can find it offensive that, apparently, girls cannot enjoy Transformers, or that emotions are not something that boys have.

Sorry. I didn't know that there were actual girl fans. I thought they were all like my wife, who pretends to like Transformers the same way some women pretend to like sports!

84forever wrote:Yuck! Transformers were never this emotional when I was a kid. Roberts has the whole crew acting like a bunch of girls toys!

Could you please re-phrase the last part of that statement?Some of us, me included, can find it offensive that, apparently, girls cannot enjoy Transformers, or that emotions are not something that boys have.

Sorry. I didn't know that there were actual girl fans. I thought they were all like my wife, who pretends to like Transformers the same way some women pretend to like sports!

The IDW thread on this issue is filled with latent homophobia, whereas here it seems people either glissed over it, or just accepted the facts and moved on.

EDIT: Just to make this clear, I am talking about the discussion about the comic book, and not reactions to the link I provided above. It's been brought to my attention that my comments were ambiguous in regard to this.

The IDW thread on this issue is filled with latent homophobia, whereas here it seems people either glissed over it, or just accepted the facts and moved on.

To be honest I come to Seibertron to discuss Transformers with other enthusiastic fans. I don't come here to discuss genders.

I'll pretend I didn't read that.

The comics are moving towards a more mature direction, and it's inevitable that discussions about things like politics, gender, relationships, emotions, societies and the such will arise. At least, that's what I expect.

The IDW thread on this issue is filled with latent homophobia, whereas here it seems people either glissed over it, or just accepted the facts and moved on.

To be honest I come to Seibertron to discuss Transformers with other enthusiastic fans. I don't come here to discuss genders.

I'll pretend I didn't read that.

The comics are moving towards a more mature direction, and it's inevitable that discussions about things like politics, gender, relationships, emotions, societies and the such will arise. At least, that's what I expect.